I've been interested in the interface between business and biodiversity since the late 1980s when I visited a small family-run private ‘game farm’ in South Africa. The owners made their living by managing a natural landscape and conserving wildlife. Biodiversity was their business and the business of biodiversity became my work.

Will Rio+20 Advance Sustainable Development?

Expectations are high for Rio+20, but the outcomes are likely to be very different from the first Rio conference twenty years ago.

Back in 1992 at the Rio Earth Summit, the governments agreed to a comprehensive plan of action on sustainable development called Agenda 21. They also launched three important multilateral environmental agreements on biodiversity, climate change and desertification. For veterans like Philippe Roch, the former director of Switzerland’s Federal Environment Office:

“It was a big adventure, an important first step. For the first time at such a high political level issues were being integrated that until then had been tackled separately. Ways had to be found to preserve our planet’s ecosystems and resources, because otherwise there couldn’t be fair and social development for everybody in the long-term.” (swissinfo.ch)

Today the many challenges of sustainable development are still with us and in Rio this week and next, governments and many other stakeholders will try to figure out how we can move forward. The two major themes are “a green economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication” and “the institutional framework for sustainable development.” (UN Rio+20 website) Both of these have been extensively discussed over the last months and will be subject to further intensive negotiations in Rio over the coming days.

Green Economy

Regarding the green economy, the aim has been to better articulate the economic dimensions of sustainable development and, with this understanding, to agree on what all the economic actors should be doing –governments, private companies, investors, consumers, and so on. However, there is not yet a shared vision among governments about the meaning of a green economy, let alone the core elements of a green economy strategy. This might change over the coming days and we are likely to see agreement on a few specific issues such as greening government procurement.

Institutional Framework

Regarding the institutional framework for sustainable development, one element of the discussions has been whether to establish a ‘World Environment Organisation’ which could sit alongside the World Trade Organisation, the World Intellectual Property Rights Organisation, the World Health Organisation, the International Labour Organisation, and the World Bank. This could involve upgrading the current UN Environment Programme. It could include the UN Commission on Sustainable Development and the secretariats of the various multilateral environmental conventions covering biodiversity, chemicals, climate, desertification, ozone, and so on. Though there is general dissatisfaction with the current institutional framework, there is no joined up thinking (at least not yet) on how to harmonise and rationalise it. One possible outcome is a high level panel to work on this further.

Sustainable Development Goals & Finance

The so-called ‘zero draft’ of the Rio+20 outcome document covers a host of other issues of which sustainable development goals and finance are key. With the Millennium Development Goals expiring in 2015, we may see a commitment to establishing a process to draft a new set of ‘Sustainable Development Goals’ which would aim to bring together the many issues on the table. The elephant in the room, of course, is finance. With the Europeans less willing and able to transfer new and additional resources to developing countries, where is money for any new Rio+20 commitments to come from? Public funding for sustainable development will need to be complemented somehow by increased engagement of the private sector.

Beyond the Multilateral Negotiations

The private sector, including many large companies such as PwC and Unilever and not-for-profit organisations such as the ICTSD and IUCN, will be in Rio interacting and discussing in hundreds of side events. This is where much of the substantive action is likely to take place. The multilateral negotiations may be necessary, but they are clearly not sufficient to advance sustainable development. With many companies now fully aware of the business case for sustainability and with many non-profits now connecting the dots between environmental responsibility, social equity and poverty alleviation, one of the likely outcomes of Rio will be an increased commitment by the private sector to get on with the job of developing the global economy sustainably.

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Ah the irony of the United Nothing Bureaucrats that are the .001% Billionaires’ Puppets meeting in a third world country to talk about restricting free citizens of the First World.

People need to wake up to the Agenda 21 and frauds like naked land grabs, and the disgusting Pay To Pollute Carbon Credit Con game Oil men like Al Gorlione are pushing.

Dr. Savage predicted when the Nazis Returned it wouldn’t be in Silver and Black with an Oom-Pah-Pah band. Instead we have 60′s Rad Libs and Occupying Green Gen X/Nexters with Hippie and Techno drug music. Great…